Tuesday

Apr 3, 2012 at 1:35 PM

"In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes," Andy Warhol said in 1968. When YouTube launched 37 years later, people began taking that prophecy more literally.

Comedian Daniel Tosh, who'll be at the Civic Center next week, has made a career of skewering them - most notably on his highly-rated Comedy Central show "Tosh.0," which debuted in 2009. He's taken shots at such instant celebrities as Afro Ninja, Keyboard Cat, Tay Zonday ("Chocolate Rain") and The Naked Wizard.

Editor's warning: The videos in this story are not appropriate for young viewers and may not be safe for work.

Most videos go unnoticed, but some become hugely popular, generating hundreds of thousands of views overnight. Content producers try to figure out the difference between the former and the latter.

Phil Keeling is an editor with Classy Hands, a Savannah-based web magazine that's more like a digital comedy troupe. Their video "Ferris Club" has more than 400,000 views on YouTube, plus the approval of author Chuck Palahniuk. The spoof trailer combines "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" with Palahniuk's "Fight Club." It's the sort of bent humor that might be too far-fetched for television but thrives on the Internet.

"YouTube is great for exposing America to pure absurdism," Keeling says. "'Random' is the most-thought word on the Internet. So much of humor nowadays is just, 'What the hell was that?' And it makes no sense, but you can't help but laugh."

Andrew Davies, creative director of Paragon Design Group, has seen that sensibility carry over into advertising, too.

"It's like all those kids who were on 'America's Funniest Home Videos' hitting their dads in the groins with Wiffel bats grew up and got aluminum ones," Clark says. "People love to see other people getting hurt."

And then there's the other type of painful video - the kind that induces second-hand embarrassment. "There have always been weirdos in small towns across America," Keeling says. "Now we're realizing just how many small towns there are."

Some traits are so consistent that it seems formulaic, as if anyone could follow a recipe to achieve Internet fame. But Davies believes there's something more nuanced at work.

"The principle is really to do something unexpected," he says. "We're all so inundated with visuals, so when you think you know where one is going but then it surprises you, it's great."

Davies is glad to see average people - not just Hollywood stars - have platforms. Who knows? Maybe everyone will get creative or injured enough to steal the spotlight for a few minutes.

But for now, a better guess: In the future, every cat will be famous for 15 seconds.

Savannah's Viral Videos

Here are four of Savannah's most popular YouTube exports, in no particular order. If we missed one, let us know in the comments section. Watch the videos by clicking in the video tab at top left or below.

• "The Lorax." A Grindhouse retelling of Dr. Seuss' classic tale. You probably shouldn't watch this at work. Nowhere near as irreverent as the Internet gets, but it gives you an idea. Brought to you by Classy Hands.

• "Shane Sings Five Octaves on the Piano." Shane has recorded hundreds of videos of himself performing music. This particularly ambitious one - in which his face twitches and contorts as he reaches higher on the scale - got international attention with more than 1 million views. Click here to watch this video.

• "Ferris Club." Ferris is to Cameron as Tyler Durden is to Ed Norton's character in "Fight Club." The Ferrari-kicking scene works particularly well. Another Classy Hands success.

• "Little Ghost Boy in Colonial Park Cemetery." Savannah is the most haunted city in America, so we'd better have some viral ghost vids to show for it. This one purportedly records a young apparition skipping through Colonial Park Cemetery, then hopping into a tree.

LAUGH IRL• You can see Steven Clark and other local comedians 8 p.m. April 11 at the Boiler Room, 302 Williamson St.• Phil Keeling's debut comedy album, "Conquistadork," is out now.